In this part, we will cover the Job Management and Pricing and Payments options related to a Job Bidding Website.

Let’s begin.

Functionality: Job Management

The job management angle presents itself once a freelancer has been selected, and a project has been awarded. The job management section should provide tools- for both freelancer and client- to collaborate and work towards the completion of the project, and to track the project status through various phases of development.

Agreements and Project Policies: Before the project begins, it is best practice to be clear with the project agreements and terms of service. There needs to be a section where the client can upload contracts, that need to be accepted by the service providers, and vice versa.

There should be a provision to commit agreement documents. For example, if there is a non-disclosure agreement for the project, there should be a possibility to commit the NDA document, using digital signatures from both parties. Once the document has been committed, it cannot be edited without permission from both parties.

The terms of service should contain a list of agreed upon project deliverables. The project can be marked complete only when all the deliverables are met. The project timeline should also be set, along with a time estimate for each deliverable. The deliverables should be automatically transformed (or broken down) into milestones, when the project implementation begins.

Agreements for premature project closure, project cancellation, should be formed and agreed upon.

Tracking Milestones and Project Progress: A new project can be started by a job owner or the client. Each project will be divided into milestones based on the requirements.

A timesheet will be provided to track freelancer effort. Each entry in the timesheet will be in relation to a milestone. There has to be an approval feature for the client, to approve freelancer activities, on a timely basis.

Each milestone will have a status (open, in progress, completed, etc). There will be a provision to set reminders and automated emails for the status updates.

The project milestones can be tracked through weekly status reports. The decided deliverables deadlines can be only changed by the client.

There will be visual representation to give an indication of development status, such as progress reports, status summary (open issues, closed issues, etc). There has to be an export option of project status.

Project Related Documents and Sharing: Several documents are created and maintained during a project development, for quality and tracking purposes. For example, project overview, requirements specification, design documents, implementation documents, etc.

These documentation created in relation to the project, will be shared in a common workplace. This will include PDFs, Doc files, or Images related to the project.

The editing rights for each document, can be set by the owner of the document.

Any documents updated as attachments for status updates, etc, will be available under this section, as well.

Functionality: Pricing and Payments

Usually, freelancer job bidding websites, have two kinds of pricing structures; a Fixed Price job or an Hourly Priced job. There should be an option when posting a job, which decides if the job will be a fixed price or hourly priced job. The pricing option once set, cannot be changed for the project. The payment options will depend on the pricing structure chosen.

Pricing Options

Fixed Price Job: A fixed price job is dictated by the client, wherein the price(or a price range) for a job is decided beforehand. Generally a time estimate is also specified, and the price set is an indication, that the job is expected to be completed in the specified time frame.

The price remains unchanged throughout the progress of the project. Although a change in requirements, may be considered as an additional requirement, and may be subject to additional cost.

The project cancellation charges may be set as a percentage of project price, or based on milestones completed.

Hourly Priced Job: For an hourly priced job, the price quoted will directly depend on the number of hours required to complete the job. The client when setting up a project will provide a time and cost estimate. A freelancer, will quote an hourly rate and a time estimate in hours, for project completion.

In an hourly priced job, the cost of the project will depend on the number of hours spent by the freelancer to complete it. There need to be fields provided to set hourly rate, number of hours which will be spent per week, and total hours needed to complete the project.

Because the rates are decided beforehand, any delay from the freelancer, may not be paid for. But requirement changes which involve more effort will be billed at the decided upon hourly rate.

If a project is cancelled by the client before completion, the effort spent has to be paid to the developer at the decided rate.

Payment Options

As mentioned, the payment structure and timeline will be decided based on the pricing option set.

For a fixed price job, it is best to provide an Escrow system. An Escrow system is a third party service, which acts as a secure mode to maintain and disburse funds.

When a client assigns a job to a freelancer, the payment to be made is locked in the Escrow system. Upon project completion, the payment is automatically awarded to the freelancer.

There are options to divide the payment according to the milestones, to fund an ongoing project. The amount set will be automatically given to the freelancer on milestone completion status.

For Hourly jobs, there can be an auto-pay option provided, each time a timesheet is approved. This can be set to a weekly or bi-weekly basis, depending on the total duration of the project. The amount to be paid gets calculated automatically, depending on the number of hours put in the timesheet.

Once due payment is done, a project can be marked as complete in all aspects.

A freelancer Job Bidding Website or a Reverse Auction Website, can succeed only when it provides the right tools, which meet client and freelancer/ service provider needs. From providing advanced search options, several communication channels, bidding options, job management and payment channels, each feature listed has to be implemented intuitively, and in detail, to cover every aspect of a client-freelancer relationship.

Only can in-depth knowledge of the requirement, and WordPress expertise, help you, create a powerful and useful Job Bidding website.

Comments

Lekan:

Please you have explained what a freelance should have but few plugins are given and no directions in doing it yourself… I want to build one and I was hoping I could find a tutorial that can recommend plugins and steps.

Hi, Thank-you for the comment. The article is a guide, explaining all the needed features you should consider when creating a Freelancer Job Bidding Website. Instead of considering using plugins for each functionality, you should check out available themes, which will give you a solid start like Responsive WordPress Auction theme. Or you could use a plugin like Ultimate Auction and set up jobs as items on auction.

I think this is an excellent article explaining the full features. We want to build a website like Odesk and I found this article as an excellent starting point to understand how it is all put together. I am wondering if your team have designed and built a website similar to Freelancer and if you are interested in bidding for a job like this. There are plenty of scripts available in the market for $500 but they all look amateurish. We want to build a professional website.

Hi Akshaya, great article and thank you for sharing this information. Do you consider WP Job Manager a valid starting point for a “freelancer job bidding website”? I’m evalueting this plugin, but there isn’t all the relevent bidding part.

Hi, Can we have a deeper discussion about the rough details of cost and timing for customized solution, and how to integrate into some existing plugins? please send one email then we can show more detail requirements, thanks!